And the Best of Interop Winners Are...

Last night's event was sponsored by CMP Media publications Network Computing, Network Magazine, CRN and VARBusiness, together with Key3Media's NetWorld Interop. Ron Anderson, lab director for Network Computing, was the lead judge. He worked with a number of CMP editors, including our own technology editor, David Strom, to evaluate approximately 200 entries across multiple technology categories in search of the best of the best.

And, now, the envelope, please...

TOP WINNERS

• Best of Interop Grand Prize Award: VBrick Systems, VBXcast
• Best Start-Up Product: Tarari, Tarari Anti-Virus Content Processor
• Convergence Technology: These products make use of multimedia and streaming-media capabilities. Includes IP phones, call centers, PBXs, voice and video gateways, streaming-media delivery and videoconferencing technologies.
• WINNER: VBrick Systems
• Enterprise Network Infrastructure: Products that make up the core connectivity in the network. Covers LAN and campus switches, hubs, routers and critical network services such as DNS and DHCP.
• WINNER: 3Com, 3Com NJ90 Network Jack
• Network Applications Software: Software that runs on a network and provides services to users. Includes products and technologies such as Web servers, browsers, server operating systems, portal software, directories, databases, development tools, e-commerce integration tools and collaboration and messaging applications.
• WINNER: Computer Associates, CleverPath Portal
• Network Management: Covers systems and utilities for managing health of network devices and applications software. Includes policy servers, configuration management, application management, performance management, load and capacity passive monitoring tools, user activity tools, etc.
• WINNER: Panacya, Panacya BusinessAware 2.2
• Network Servers and Peripherals: Server hardware platforms and peripherals that support network services. Includes network adapters, and network-attached appliances except NAS and SANs.
• WINNER: Digital V6, Kaveman 16
• Network Test and Measurement: Covers those products that actively measure and stress performance of all aspects of the network, including the physical connections, logical connections and applications. Includes network analyzers, cable testers, application load generators and network test equipment.
• WINNER: Ixia, Optixia & OLM1000STXS24
• Networked Storage: Covers the products and technologies in the storage market, such as networked attached storage (NAS) and storage area networks (SANs), as well as iSCSI, InfiniBand and Fibre Channel technologies. Tape drive, automation devices, Flash drives and the latest in optical technologies, such as DVD-RW, will also be considered.
• WINNER: Cisco Systems, Cisco MDS 9000 IP Storage Services Module
• Performance Enhancement: Products actively enhance the performance of network services. Examples include accelerators, caching devices, traffic tuners and load balancers.
• WINNER: Nauticus Networks, Nauticus N2000 Series of intelligent data-center switches
• Security: Products that monitor security and provide security services. Examples include firewalls, VPN products, certificate authorities, intrusion-detection systems, denial-of-service solutions and vulnerability-assessment tools.
• WINNER: netForensics, netForensics V3.1
• Wireless Technologies: Both hardware and software wireless products, technologies and services will be considered. Products based on personal area networking (PAN), local area networking (LAN), wide area networking (WAN) as well as fixed-access wireless will be examined. On the software side, wireless middleware, security and application technologies will also be investigated.
• WINNER: AirMagnet, The AirMagnet Distributed System